FUNNY GRAFFITI

FUNNY GRAFFITI TORONTO LUNCHROOM MURAL

Funny Graffiti
Murals! This giant lunchroom mural features a wide assortment of
crazy characters feasting on comically over sized drumsticks, pizza
slices and gigantic pints of beer. The silly lunchtime scenario takes
place on the streets of Toronto with several iconic buildings visible
in the background and numerous food trucks, cafes and restaurants
lining the street level storefronts. The work was commissioned for
the common space lunchroom of the Critical Mass new media office in
Toronto. The space is multifunctional and used daily for meals as
well as group events, business meetings and presentations. The
concept behind the work was to create something humorous that was
filled with all sorts of tiny details so that each time the office
employees look at it they could discover something new.

One interesting
aspect of the project was trying to find a way to please as many
people as possible with the work. The office is shared by a lot of
different people working in various areas of social media. The
workers represent a number of differing age groups, cultural niches
and backgrounds so expressing diversity and the use of comedic images
was integral to the piece. In order to do this I made sure to include
a wide variety of ethnicity in both the characters and the types of
food. To make the drawing funny I exaggerated a lot of the
character's expressions such as bulging eyeballs and maniac smiles as
they gorge on the meals. The size and type of the food was also
grossly exaggerated as one person can be seen chomping on an
oversized whole tuna fish. I also added a number of animals sneaking
around looking for food including a cat stealing some sushi from an
unsuspecting couple.

The entire mural
spanned approximately 30 feet long by 6 feet high with a few small
details hiding up behind the vent shaft. I put a few clouds and
helicopters up at the top which aren't visible from the main floor
but make the mural would look more complete when people were sitting
directly below it. Prior to installation the company held a few
brainstorming sessions to get their ideas together and I provided
about five sketches for them to choose from. The sketches basically
showed various degrees of silliness and a few different ratios
between the amount of people in the crowd as compared to the size of
the skyline. They eventually decided on a 70% crowd 30% buildings
ratio and opted for the most exaggerated and silly version of the
characters. With these preparations in place it was very easy to do
the work. I drew the mural free hand directly onto the wall using
artist quality black acrylic paints and the entire installation took
less 5 days to complete.